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Texas: Senior Senator Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R) Last Updated July 15, 2003
Kay Bailey Hutchison, senior senator from Texas, is a Republican who first won her seat in a June 1993 special election. She is of old Texas stock, the great-great-granddaughter of Charles S. Taylor, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, who was a friend and business partner of Senator Thomas Jefferson Rusk, the first man to hold this seat; Hutchison is the first woman. She grew up in LaMarque, near the refinery town of Texas City, a prom queen who went to college and then law school at the University of Texas; unable to get a law job in 1967, she worked for a Houston TV station as a reporter. In 1972, she won a seat in the legislature, its first Republican woman. In 1976 she went to Washington to fill the number two position at the National Transportation Safety Board. She married her former colleague Ray Hutchison, moved to Dallas and went into banking and became a small business owner in 1978. In 1982, she lost a House race to Steve Bartlett, later mayor of Dallas. But she stayed active in Republican politics and in 1990 was elected state treasurer, a breakthrough race for state Republicans. Hutchison began her political career when it was no advantage to be a woman and has been mocked by liberals for her tight-lipped good manners and by Washington conservatives as a "Texas pompom girl." Her response: "This is what I have faced all my life--the trivialization of me--which I have not ever let bother me. I have always been able to rise above the expectations." Indeed: She is a senator from the nation's second-largest state, one of three senators in history (Dianne Feinstein and Daniel Patrick Moynihan are the others) to have been elected with 4 million votes. Her big break came in January 1993 when Lloyd Bentsen resigned his Senate seat after 22 years to become secretary of the Treasury. To replace him, Governor Ann Richards appointed Bob Krueger, a two-term congressman in the 1970s who nearly beat Senator John Tower in 1978, then ran third in a three-way Senate primary in 1984 and was elected railroad commissioner (actually, oil regulator) in 1990. Running against him in the May 1993 all-party primary were three Republicans, Hutchison and Congressmen Joe Barton and Jack Fields. Krueger opposed the Clinton budget and tax plan, but Democrats were so unpopular in Texas then--Bill Clinton had a 73% negative job rating--that Krueger won only 29% of the total vote, just behind Hutchison, also with 29%; Barton and Fields won 14% each. Hutchison kept the focus on Clinton and won the June runoff by an astonishing 67%-33%. Three serious Democrats were running as she entered the race for the full term in 1994. The potentially strongest candidate, moderate Houston Congressman Mike Andrews, was eliminated in the March primary. In the April runoff, former Attorney General and bitter Richards enemy Jim Mattox lost 54%-46% to Richard Fisher, a free-spending moderate who campaigned extensively in the Border counties in Spanish. Fisher's credentials seemed a bit fishy--he claimed to have been an adviser to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, though Thatcher said their acquaintance was minor--and Hutchison cruised to a solid 61%-38% victory. Hutchison has a mostly conservative voting record. She is opposed to outlawing abortion and favors embryonic stem cell research, but voted for the partial-birth abortion ban. In her first years she worked on the 1996 welfare act, helping to write a funding formula helpful to Texas and getting funding for colonias and other border infrastructure. She beat a Democratic filibuster and inserted in a September 1999 appropriation a ban on Clinton administration plans to increase oil and gas royalties on federal land. She supported the Bush energy bill, including oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Hutchison has long sought to repeal the marriage penalty; in 1997 she sponsored a bill to do so that was vetoed by Clinton. She supported it as part of the 2001 Bush tax cut and advanced her own version with relief for homemakers. In January 2003 she co-sponsored with Evan Bayh a bill to repeal it immediately and permanently. She also co-sponsored with two Democrats a bill to allow IRA holders over 59 to withdraw money for charitable donations without paying tax. On the Aviation Subcommittee she sponsored a 2000 law strengthening airport security that was being put into effect on September 11. After that tragedy she worked with Chairman Jay Rockefeller and strongly supported federalization of airport security. That position prevailed unanimously in the Senate; in conference committee she worked out a compromise with the House, which had voted for private security personnel, which seems likely to effectively federalize the program. In November 2002 she called for a speedup of the registered traveler program, which would issue identity cards with biometric information. That month the Senate passed unanimously the cargo security bill she and Dianne Feinstein co-sponsored; the House did not act and in January 2003 they introduced it again. Hutchison had hoped to be chairman of the Aviation Subcommittee, but in January 2003 Trent Lott returned to the committee and with greater seniority, claimed the post; she became chairman of the Surface Transportation Subcommittee instead. She has been a longtime supporter of the Amtrak system and of Amtrak lines in Texas. But she argues that Amtrak should get tougher on its unions. Hutchison is also a strong supporter of the manned space program; she grew up near what is now the Johnson Space Center. Before the February 2003 Columbia disaster she warned of underfunding, and afterwards she expressed confidence in the program and called for more funding. "If you see how many times they've aborted takeoffs for one little malfunction or signal that came through, I do think they put safety first. But I don't think you can continue draconian cuts and continue to do the mission safely." Hutchison has weighed in on a number of health issues. In May 2001 she introduced a bill to reverse the proposed $735 million cut in reimbursement of teaching hospitals; she was supported by other senators with little in common except that they represent states with big teaching hospitals--Charles Schumer, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Edward Kennedy, Jesse Helms. She and Barbara Mikulski co-sponsored a bill for $250 million research in blood cancers; at a hearing she introduced those struck by such cancers, including former Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro and her brother Allan Bailey. The bill became law in May 2002, with a research program named after former Congressman Joe Moakley and an education program named after Ferraro. With Dianne Feinstein, she has co-sponsored continuation of the breast cancer stamp. Also with Feinstein, she co-sponsored the national AMBER Alert bill in 2002; it is named after Amber Hagerman, who was abducted in 1996 in Arlington, Texas. It passed the Senate in 2002 and became law in April 2003. Hutchison is vice-chairman of the Senate Republican Conference. Six days after Trent Lott's comments at Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party she called his words "overboard" and defended his record of support of blacks and Hispanics. She talked with him frequently and conveyed the opinions of other Republican senators; the last call was the morning of December 20, when he bowed out of the majority leader post. During the Clinton years, Hutchison was critical of administration foreign policy; she was wary of U.S. involvement in the former Yugoslavia, called for an eventual pullout from Bosnia, and decried Clinton administration policy in Kosovo. "We have seen the United States stumble into a series of regional crises--displacing local powers that share our objectives and are otherwise able to act on their own. This has led to strategic missteps--a hallmark of Clinton administration foreign policy." She has generally supported the foreign policy of the Bush administration. On Texas issues, Hutchison has worked to protect Texas's military bases against another round of base closings. San Antonio, with four bases and two military medical centers, is a particular concern; Kelly Air Force Base there was closed in 2001, costing the area 10,900 civilian jobs. In July 2002 she sponsored an amendment to change the base closing ranking and evaluation systems, which she says have produced mistakes in previous base closing rounds. In July 2001 she used her seat on the Appropriations Committee to earmark $25 million for Houston Metro, for either a study of expanding its rail line or for improvements in the Katy Freeway; that put her in a fight with Tom DeLay, who on House Appropriations put in a provision barring federal funds for Houston Metro rail. She met with officials from the Mexican state of Chihuahua in May 2002 and disagreed when they said they did not have any water to release to the Rio Grande, as required by a 1944 treaty; Mexico is in arrears on its obligations, and south Texas farmers say they have lost $1 billion in the last decade. For a time she opposed the Bush administration and her colleague Phil Gramm on Mexican trucks, calling for more inspections before they are allowed into the United States. Hutchison was reelected in 2000 by a 65%-32% margin over an opponent named Gene Kelly who had no visible support; she carried 237 of 254 counties. After the election she showed some interest in running for governor in 2002, but that would have meant a primary against Rick Perry; in March 2001 she announced she would not do so. In August and November 2001 Hutchison and her husband adopted two infants from an adoption agency; she and Christopher Dodd are two senators approaching 60 who became parents for the first time.
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